Posts by Kyle Matthews
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I didn't watch any of the games over the weekend, but I think a fair comment was made on stuff, that the high number of penalties should settle down as the teams adjust to the new rule interpretations, and the referees let their line in the sand loosen a little once it's been made.
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I did enjoy one of the spin-offs - Sudhir Venkatesh's 'Gang Leader for a Day'. If you liked 'the wire', you'll probably enjoy it.
I thought it was an interesting story, but not well written/told.
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Dude, we do that every weekend up here. Only a handful of people die.
The rest of Aucklanders are witches, apparently.
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To make a comparison; I saw the execution of Saddam Hussein. I would argue I was not complicit in the execution of Saddam Hussein regardless of the fact that I willingly clicked on the link.
The comparison isn't valid. Saddam Hussien wasn't stolen from his home or sold by his indebted parents and then sexually abused so that people could sell the images for profit.
Child porn is a market. People who contribute to that market are helping feed the other end which is the abuse of children.
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Unfortunately, one of the problems is that much of this commercial pornography features women who aren't ejaculating, but are instead using a bag filled with liquid to create the appearance of ejaculation.
Do you shout this out when it's on as well? "That's not real! She's bagged that up beforehand! C'mon people..."
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Then there were the teachers who ignored my concerns about my daughter's reading, telling me that she was achieving what was needed for a child of her age.
It's even worse when your child clearly isn't achieving at their age level, and yet all their reports and teacher-parent meetings clearly state that they are.
We just changed schools after one year of intermediate, and got a damning report four days in of how much he was struggling and how much work we have ahead to make him ready for high school. Showed the new teacher and principal his end of year report from the old school, and they just shook their heads.
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I have been told our own censors are obliged to spend a lot of time trying to decide whether they're looking at female ejaculation (okay) or urination (probably not okay). I'm also told the time spent thus is a source of considerable frustration to them.
Obviously I'm an innocent soul, but I would have presumed it would have been something that could have been determined at a glance. Are there women out there who look like they're having an orgasm while actually peeing?
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I thought it was generally accepted that Levin is the most boring place in New Zealand. Has Clive eclipsed it?
Levin has a good playground, good swimming pool (including hydroslide), and at least one good cafe (the name escapes me). Obviously I travel with children almost all the time.
New Zealand has done way worse.
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I have mixed feelings about the GST increase. The advantage of GST is that it pretty much catches everyone to a reasonable extent. Yes it's a flat (ish) tax, but at least people that are writing off all their income to trusts or farms or hiding it under the table end up paying some out the other end.
If they had increased GST, but adjusted all the income tax scales to return that as much as possible, I would have been happy with that. That would have involved reducing all the rates by about 2%? I'm not sure how that would have worked out in terms of the government coffers.
I can't get up in arms about the property investment market either, my current home just got listed today as I'm moving in with my partner and renting my home out. I think the attraction to NZers isn't so much money, it's the sensible, physical nature of it. In much the same way that our home ownership rate is high, people like to invest in a property that they can rent out and look after themselves. It gives us control over our own situation, we can paint it and do it up and eventually make some money off our weekends and holidays when we sell it. I'd be interested to learn how many rental properties are owned by families, and how many by companies as part of an investment portfolio.
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But this is the problem. That is emphatically not what the ministry experts believe they're doing with our standards system. Schrager explicitly says that's a failed idea and any attempt to do it would be "damaging".
But as you're noting Russell, there's a big story in the chasm between "why we have new national standards", and "what the ministry is trying to make them into". The ministry is having to run with the hospital pass they've been given.
As no matter what the ministry does, I'd be very dubious that quasi league tables and promotion by schools of their standards ratings won't happen. If you're the principal of a good school, only a directive from on high is going to stop you saying "this school achieves X points above the average for standards achievement". And if you don't say it, someone else is going to collate the information and put it online to www.chooseyourschool.co.nz or some such.
Uni of Canty has a list of all graduates from about 1980 freely able to be viewed.
Most universities publish a list of graduates at each graduation ceremony, and their degrees.
Once the information is in the public arena like that, privacy provisions have been circumvented so it can be republished.